Recently, there has developed increasing interest among nutritionists and among consumers in high fiber food products, particularly in high fiber ready to eat cereals. At the present time, wheat bran is the principal ingredient which is relied upon to provide high fiber content for example in ready to eat cereals. However, some commercially available wheat-bran ready to eat cereal products become soggy and pasty almost immediately upon wetting of the product in milk. Others are very hard and go almost to the other extreme of not being palatable, even in milk, because of prolonged hardness.
On the other hand vast quantities of corn bran are available for use in the high fiber human food products such as, for example, ready to eat cereals. It would be highly desirable to produce high fiber cereal products utilizing corn bran as the source for the high fiber content, in conventional cooker-extruder expansion processes and equipment, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,054,677 to W. R. Graham, Jr. et al. or U.S. Pat. No. 3,462,277 to R. R. Reinhardt. Such processes and equipment economically and at very high speeds, produce a modern, dry, ready to eat cereal product, having an attractive palatable appearance, e.g. a bite size or larger sized product, having strong sales appeal to the average consumer. The products are light, crisp and frangible, having pleasing color and taste.
In such processes a dry-appearing mixture of ingredients is passed quickly through a cooker-extruder in which high pressure and temperature is generated. The ingredients are quickly cooked, a dough is formed, and the dough is expelled through a constricted opening, e.g. through a plurality of dies, under high temperature and pressure conditions. Temperature and pressure ahead of the dies are maintained high enough to cause sudden release of pressure when the dough is forced through the dies, with sudden conversion of at least some of the moisture to steam in the extruded dough mass to develop small and large bubbles in the resulting product. This development of bubbles throughout the extrudate is called "expansion". The extruded expanded dough passes through a momentary, fleeting stage in which the dough is extremely cohesive, sticky and flexible, and upon the sudden flashing of some additional amounts of the water, the water content drops, and the pieces are immediately transformed into less sticky pieces. These pieces are then typically charged into a high temperature, high velocity air stream, in which the drying step is completed and the dry pieces develop the highly desirable toasted appearance.
However, the technology has not been available for the production of an extruded expanded cereal product using corn bran as an ingredient in such processes.
It is an object of the present invention to provide process technology for the production of extruded expanded ready to eat cereal products utilizing corn bran as the source of additional fiber. It is a further object of the present invention to provide an expanded ready to eat cereal product utilizing corn bran as an ingredient, which product has very favorable sensory characteristics. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a high fiber expanded ready to eat cereal product utilizing corn bran as the principal source of the additional fiber present.